


searching for the colors of the world

by virvatulilla



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Everyone is Queer, F/F, M/M, Multi, not slow burn per se but the main pairing will find each other pretty late in the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-03-27 13:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13882047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virvatulilla/pseuds/virvatulilla
Summary: an AU for my original story. That soulmate au where you don't see color before you see your soulmate. Vicos/Pridon/Qwinceran (minor ships rofen/frela, draien/reldan, niroe/sharra, asheden/kúura)Vicos decides to look for his soulmate by traveling around the world, and meets people he teams up with, each looking for their own soulmate.





	1. Chapter 1

Vicos had met his soulmate when he was pretty young, around seven or eight years old. It had probably been someone in a group of people passing by him when he was sitting on a park bench after school. Suddenly, there had been color in the world. The grass had been green, the sky blue, people's clothes seemed to be so bright and had more contrast than ever. It was a beautiful, stunning thing, and Vicos had cried at the beauty of the colors.

It had only lasted for a month. Every moment farther away from meeting his soulmate the colors faded until it was like nothing had happened at all.

Vicos started going to the park every day in hopes of meeting his soulmate again. After a month, then a year of doing that Vicos was convinced that the person probably didn't even live in the city. But he continued going to the park every day anyway, since it had become a habit. In the winter it was not as nice to spend time there as in the summer, but he still had to sit on the bench for a while every day.

Months passed. Then years. Vicos saw people around him find the colors of their life; they talked to Vicos about the vibrant colors of nature, the yellow of autumn leaves, the blue of the sea, the green of a summer grass, about berries, and color patterns Vicos was unable to see.

After a decade of wishing and waiting Vicos decided to give up hope.

“It’s just... I’ve been waiting for so long y’know?” Vicos said. He was at a classmate’s house party with his best friend, Kúura. They were sitting on the sun deck, having some time alone. “There are too fucking many people in the world, like, dude, my soulmate could be a tourist from... the other side of the world or something. How depressing is that.”

Kúura chuckled. “Well, in this city it’s pretty likely,” he said. “I’m sorry, dude. You could always start traveling. And besides, who says you have to find your soulmate at eighteen? I sure as hell haven’t.”

Vicos scoffed. “But who else hasn’t? Have you seen the people in this party?” he glanced over his shoulder. “Everyone’s too damn happy.”

Kúura shrugged. “I doubt they’ve found their soulmate yet,” he said. “You can have fun with people that aren’t your soulmate. You shouldn’t throw other relationships away just because that person isn’t your soulmate.”

“Like us, you mean?”

Kúura shook his head. “I don’t just mean friendships. Romantic relationships too, you know, like dating someone. A lot of people do that actually, I guess to rehearse relationship stuff until they meet their soulmate. Of course, some soulmates turn out to be platonic anyway, so having a lover and a soulmate be different persons is totally normal.”

Vicos looked Kúura in the eyes and sighed. “Why can’t you be my soulmate?” he asked. “Everything would be so much better. I wouldn’t feel this bad about having met my soulmate once when I was a kid and then never again. What if I never meet them again?”

Kúura showed Vicos a crooked smile, and leaned in closer to him. “Y’know, we can have sex without being soulmates. If you wanna forget about all this soulmate stuff for a moment.”

There was a pause. Laughter from the house trickled out from a crack in the door. “Do you really mean that?” Vicos asked. “Right now?”

“Well…” Kúura said, hesitating a bit. “I’m not into having an audience, so I’m not doing it here. But if you wanna get away…”

“Please,” Vicos sighed, leaning into Kúura's side. “I haven’t had sex in  _ weeks _ .”

“Okay,” Kúura laughed, taking Vicos’s face between his hands. “I hear you, friend. Let’s get out of here.”

That night with Kúura in Vicos’s bedroom was a night that stayed with him. It wasn’t the first time for either of them, and the sex was neither bad nor mind-blowing. It was just two best friends having sex, and Vicos knew it was one of the best things that had happened to him.

 

After Vicos got out of school that spring he dedicated five years of his life to traveling around the world, trying to find his soulmate. He knew from the start that it would probably be highly unlikely he’d find his soulmate that way, but he also knew he wouldn’t be the only one looking. Maybe his soulmate was looking for him as well.

Traveling was cheap, and most food and lodging places accepted labor as a payment. The first year was the toughest for Vicos. He missed his home, his friends and family, clean clothes, having someone to look after him when he was sick, being able to communicate with people properly… He had to learn the hard way how things worked in the world; he got robbed several times, molested, taken advantage of, led on. He had good, decent, awful, and horrible experiences of lodging and eating places, and learned how to figure out which category a place belonged to. 

During his travels Vicos also learned how to find places to sleep for a night or where to find food if you hadn’t found a good place to stay. Those were mostly sketchy places filled with people who Vicos could talk to but would’ve never trusted. They were usually other travelers, some of which had been out in the world, searching for their soulmate for decades.

It was in one of those places where Vicos had the best encounter of his life after meeting Kúura for the first time.

Vicos had been traveling for twenty-six months, and as it was the end of August he had traveled north, because he had learned the hard way that it was unwise to stay in the hottest parts of the world when it was summer there. That climate was way too hot for him.

“Excuse me, can talk to you?”

Vicos looked up. It wasn’t usual for people in these places to talk to each other, so it took him by surprise. “What do you have to say?” he asked.

“Can you read what this says?” the person showed Vicos a ribbon on their wrist. Vicos was about to say wearily he didn’t, but then something changed. He could faintly see the purple – he thought that was the name of the color – letters on the ribbon.

“You are… my friend,” Vicos read out loud, and looked the person in the eye. “What’s this? How can I see it but not any other colors?”

The person smiled at him. “Because you’re one of my soulmate friends,” they explained. “Can I sit next to you while I explain?”

Vicos nodded. “Sure, go ahead.” He didn’t ask the person to, but they sat beyond an arm’s reach of Vicos. He was silently thankful for it, not having to justify his aversion to strangers.

“My name is Asheden,” the person said. “Chose the name for myself before I started traveling to find my soulmate.”

“I’m Vicos,” he introduced himself. “I’ve been traveling for a little over two years now.”

Asheden gave Vicos a slight, amused smile. “So you’ve just started out,” they said. “I’ve been on the road since I was ten, to be honest. Which means it’s soon going to be thirteen years since I had a home. It’s wild to think people don’t live like this.”

“Yea, your search sounds like it’s been a long one,” Vicos said. “But what’s the deal with that ribbon on your wrist? Why can I see the color even though I can’t see any other colors?”

“Oh, right, that,” Asheden said. “Sorry, I always get sidetracked when I’m talking to new people. The text is in ultraviolet. Even the people who can see color can’t usually see it, but I’ve heard other people talk about seeing it, us who don’t see colors. You can see it when someone who can aid you in finding your soulmate is wearing something with that color, or the other way around – someone who you can aid in finding their soulmate. You could say it’s a kind of a mark for people you can trust when you’re on the road.”

Vicos thought about Asheden’s words for a while. “I have never heard of it,” he said, “and magically seeing ultraviolet doesn’t make me trust you until you’ve proved that I can actually trust you. Is there something you want to do with this now?”

Asheden nodded at Vicos’s words. “I understand why you feel suspicious,” they said. “And I won’t blame you for it one bit. Do you have a plan on how you’re traveling around or would you consider coming with me?”

“Depends on where you’re going. I’d rather travel by myself and meet you at some place, if that’s okay with you.”

Asheden nodded again at Vicos’s words. “That’s very fine by me,” they said. “Before we discuss travel plans, though… are you by any chance… gay?”

The question made Vicos chuckle. “Why do you ask?”

“Because the place I’m suggesting that we meet at is exclusively for people of the sexual and gender minority identities,” Asheden said. “So is my hunch right or do I need to think of another place to meet at?”

Vicos smiled a little. “No need to find another place,” he told Asheden. “I’m bisexual.”

They made plans to meet up at the address Asheden gave to Vicos on a piece of paper. It was within a week’s travel by train and bus, which was Vicos’s preferred way of traveling. Asheden stayed until Vicos was going to sleep and told him to be at the address in two weeks.

It took Vicos six days until he was at the city, but two more to find the address, because it was on a far side of the city, and didn’t show up on maps. Luckily Vicos got access to a computer in the city’s library and found the place that way.

Asheden was in front of the building when Vicos arrived there. “What a coincidence!” Asheden said when they saw Vicos nervously coming closer. “I was just telling Draien about you.”

The person standing next to Asheden looked at least three years younger than Vicos. Vicos hoped that he was a local and not someone who was already traveling the world to find their soulmate, but considering how many preteens he had seen on his travels (tagging along with older siblings or other relatives mostly), it was not out of the question.

“Let’s go inside,” Asheden said cheerily. “We have a lot to discuss.”


	2. Chapter 2

The second autumn of his travel around the world Vicos spent in the queer community lodging house. He was there until New Year’s, making a total four months of staying there. It was the longest time in all the five years of his travels that he spent in one place, but it was probably also the longest time when he felt like he had a place he belonged to.

In there he also had the equipment to contact his family and those friends he had managed to somehow stay in touch with during his travels – mostly by sending postcards and some spare messages in social media when he’d had access to a computer. He had fallen out of the habit of using the internet every day, but he managed to have a conversation with at least someone of his friends and family almost every week.

During that autumn Vicos found out that almost everyone that was living there – especially Asheden, Draien, Rofen, and Niroe – was the kind of person that would be able to aid him in finding his soulmate. All of them had been traveling the world for some time and had been in the need of a break from all of it when they had been made aware of the lodging house.

Vicos used most of his time to catch up on things he had missed on his travels. He watched popular movies, listened to new songs he hadn’t had the chance to buy on a CD when he was traveling, read a couple of books. There was a lot to learn, but Vicos didn’t actually mind falling behind on popular culture that much. After all, he knew there were millions of people traveling the world just like he was doing; trying to find their soulmate and with that, see the colors of the world.

After a few months of talking about it, Vicos, Asheden, Draien, Rofen, and Niroe decided to start the new year traveling together. Vicos hadn’t thought about it a lot before, but Asheden had done research that the best chances of finding one’s soulmate while traveling were at places like train stations, airports, and other places where there were people coming and going every day. Many soulmate travelers apparently stayed at places like that for days just watching people pass by. It sounded like a good plan.

As Vicos and the others spent more than one year traveling with the same group of people, seeing each other in all kinds of situations and moods, the bond they had formed in those first four months became stronger. They had arguments, fistfights, they learned each others’ behaviours when angry or sad or hungry. They cried in front of each other, got thrown out of a restaurant for having so much fun one of them knocked over a table, talked about love, their identities, experiences on the road, how they missed or didn’t miss their families and friends they were trying to keep in touch with, about things going on in the world and how horrible it was that some countries didn’t allow people to cross their borders.

The biggest subject, though, was their soulmates. Fears and concerns about them – what if they were transphobic? What if only one of them wanted it to be romantic? What if they didn’t have a language to communicate in? What if the first time meeting their soulmate wouldn’t be like people described it; something magical, beyond words? What if it wouldn’t be like those meetings they witnessed the other day, or that day, or what about that one where that one girl had been carrying an enamel flower and gave that to her soulmate? What if they’d have to be on the road for fifteen years until they found their soulmate? What if it took fifty years?

The first one to leave their group was Niroe, a year and a half after they’d started traveling together. Niroe’s family had asked her to come over for a midsummer celebration and bring her friends with her, and everyone had accepted.

“What if it’s really weird?” Niroe asked when they were aboard the last bus to her home city. “I haven’t seen my family in seven years. What if we’ve grown apart? What if I don’t recognize them anymore?”

Rofen put a calming hand on Niroe’s shoulder. “You’ve been in touch with them, haven’t you?” she said. “You’ve known them most of your life anyway. It’s gonna be fine. And if it isn’t, we’re your second family, alright? We’re gonna be there for you.”

“Thank you for saying that,” Niroe said to Rofen and sighed. “I’m just really nervous.”

All of them were asleep most of the bus ride, and they didn’t wake up until moments before they had to get off. They shuffled into the bus station lobby, dragging their backpacks along and sat down to wait for Niroe’s family to come pick them up.

Then, suddenly, Niroe jumped up.

“Are they here?” Asheden yawned and stretched their back properly. “It’s about time. Maybe we can sleep in real beds – gosh, it’s been so long since the last time that happened.”

“No, no,” Niroe hushed. “It’s not that. It’s… my soulmate.”

That got everyone’s attention. Vicos looked at Niroe, whose expression was so soft, surprised, and full of anticipation that it made his heart ache. He followed her gaze and saw a young woman staring at her phone and yawning. To Vicos she didn’t look like much, but Niroe looked as if she had seen the world in that person.

Draien nudged Niroe’s arm. “Go get her attention, dude,” he encouraged her. “Before she hops on a bus and drives away!”

Niroe looked awkward walking to the woman, and she stopped right in front of her. For a moment Vicos was afraid she would get told to fuck off without a glance, but the woman looked up. The weary expression on her face changed completely when her eyes focused on Niroe.

Asheden sighed, looking at Niroe and her soulmate fondly. “Look at her,” they said, a hint of melancholy, but also relief in their voice. “She’s not going to continue the travel with us after this. Now she’s found her soulmate, and she’s home.”

Nobody could argue with that.

The midsummer celebration with Niroe’s family was also a farewell. She had already made plans to meet her soulmate again, and was constantly talking about how beautiful the world was now that she could see its colors. Her family was over the moon to have her back, and that she’d found her soulmate so close to home.

Vicos was surprised at first when he met Niroe’s family. She had told them about her family, but never in much detail. To Vicos it felt more like a community and less like the definition of a family he was familiar with – only parents and their non-adult children living in the same house. The portion of Niroe’s family that lived in that house consisted of the two of her grandparents that were still alive, her five parents, a bunch of their friends, and a bunch of kids everyone was raising together because it wasn’t clear in all cases who were each child’s parents.

Niroe’s family was really sweet, and they were kind to her friends – except maybe one of her younger sisters who was constantly trying to pull someone’s hair. Despite that little annoyance Vicos, Asheden, Draien, and Rofen were warmly welcomed to stay as long as they needed to in order to figure out their next travel plan and say their goodbyes to Niroe.

It wasn’t easy saying final goodbyes at the bus station after spending so much time together, and being there for each other in difficult situations. There were a lot of hugs and some tears, and promises of meeting up or at least keeping in touch. Vicos knew they might be empty promises, but it didn’t stop him from making them and hoping they wouldn’t be made for nothing.

“Promise you will send pictures of you and your soulmate,” Vicos told Niroe when it was his turn to hug her before they had to leave for the bus. “This is the thing you’ve been waiting for for so long, and you deserve to rub it in our faces. I’m so happy that you finally found your soulmate, and I will miss throwing popcorn into your mouth.”

Niroe smiled fondly. “You did miss many times,” she said. “And as you guys are being all sappy on me I’m allowed to be sappy on you too. I’m so glad that I met all of you, and will cherish every moment I spent with you on the road.”

“Oh, really?” Asheden commented. “Also that time when you got so pissed off that you almost ran off having only told us you were going to the bathroom?”

Niroe chuckled. “In retrospect that wasn’t the best way to handle things,” she said. “But yes, that too. I did say every moment, didn’t I? Bad ones included.”

There wasn’t much time for talking at that point, so they just gave Niroe one last big group hug. Then they had to leave for the bus. Vicos and the others waved at Niroe from the bus window until the bus turned around a corner and they couldn’t see her anymore.

“That’s that then,” Asheden sighed and sit back on their seat. “One down, four to go, right?”


	3. Chapter 3

The next person to find a soulmate was Rofen. It happened sooner after Niroe had found her soulmate than anyone had expected; only roughly two months after it.

“I’ve been thinking,” Rofen said one morning when they stepped out of a bus and were arranging their backpacks for the walk they’d have to make to get to the place where they’d wait for a train for their train. “If I’m the next one to find my soulmate, this group won’t have girls anymore. How would you get through that?”

Asheden snorted. “You mean like me and Vicos aren’t the ones taking care of you guys?” they said. “Because I’m under that assumption.”

“I know that you’re our parents,” Rofen said, “but that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what?” Draien asked, helping Rofen lift her backpack. “We won’t have lesbian representation anynore?”

Rofen sighed. “Well, that too,” she said, “but I was more like thinking about how there will be no one who will actually tell you three that you need to take a shower. And brush your hair! Do you really wanna look like that when you meet your soulmate for the first time?”

Vicos, Draien, and Asheden eyed each other. “Um, I don’t really care,” Asheden said. “I know Vicos does, and he appreciates you telling him, but for me… I’ve lived like this for as long as I can remember. If my soulmate can’t handle me the way I am now, they won’t be able to handle me at all, which means there’s no possibility that person would be my soulmate.”

They started walking towards the train station. It was a few kilometers away, but that was not near the furthest distance they’d had to walk from one transportation vehicle or accommodation place to another. Besides, walking after a bus hour of several hours was only good, their legs needed more stretching than what was possible on the center aisle in a bus.

Once they arrived at the train station, Vicos sighed from relief to notice that it was one of the long travel -friendly ones. They only had to wait a couple of hours for a four-person room to become vacant.

Four-person rooms had been their first choices over the bigger halls with sleeping places, although it was different now that there were four of them. Because most of the sleeping rooms wouldn’t lock from the inside properly – like bathroom stalls, usually easy to open – they had taken turns watching over each other. When someone was always awake, nobody had dared to rob them.

Here the locks on the door were of the sturdier variety, but out of habit they still arranged night shifts. Asheden always took the small hours of the night, and the others just had to decide who would go to sleep when Asheden’s shift started and who had to wake up in the middle of the night at the end of Asheden’s shift. Vicos got the early rising spot, which meant he would have to wake up at four and stay awake until the sunrise.

With those arrangements two nights passed by quickly, and then it was time for them to get on board the next train.

“Woah, a train with departments,” Rofen said excitedly when they stepped on the train. “Haven’t been in one of these for a while. I wanna choose our department, follow me!”

Vicos let out a huge yawn. “How are you so cheerful?” he asked. “It’s like, seven in the morning.”

Rofen grinned. “I don’t know,” she said, “I guess I just slept well and now I’m having a great day!”

Asheden yawned as well, as they all followed Rofen along the aisle. “Vicos, remind me again why we chose this particular train?”

“This was the free train,” Vicos said. “Remember, one of the two trains a day that’s free of charge for anyone who doesn’t have a permanent address?”

Asheden groaned, but didn’t say anything. Rofen was waving at them from further down the aisle, she had apparently found a department for them.

Vicos, Asheden, and Draien all flopped down on the benches, groaning like people who had grown tired of sitting all the time. Rofen, however, had already arranged her bags neatly and was sitting on her seat upright, as if she was waiting for something. Draien, who sat on the seat next to her, immediately fell asleep. He had just woken up before they had left for the train, and during the years Vicos had learned to respect Draien’s gift for falling asleep anywhere and in any position.

“Rofen, how are you so happy?” Asheden groaned. “I can’t stand to look at you be all so excited about this as if this was the first train you’ve ever been on. What is it? Spill it. What are you not telling us?”

Rofen shook her head a little. “But there is nothing I haven’t told you guys,” she said. “I just… from this morning when I woke up, I had this feeling that something good is going to happen today.”

“Maybe you’re gonna meet your soulmate today,” Vicos suggested.

The idea made Rofen’s face light up even more. “Oh, that would be wonderful,” she said and leaned on her elbow to look out of the window with dreaming expression on her face. “They could be in this same train.”

Another train pulled to a stop beside theirs. There was less than an arm’s length of space between the trains, so they could see the passengers on the other train through the windows. Rofen was looking at them, and then, suddenly, when their train jerked a little and started moving, she jumped up.

“AH!” Rofen ran to the department door, and dashed out of it, against the direction where the train was moving, as the train accelerated. Vicos and Asheden looked at each other. “She found her soulmate,” Asheden sighed. “But it seems like she’ll have to find them again.”

Vicos sighed too. “Seems like it,” he agreed. “I’m the expert on that, and I can assure you it’s not easy to find your soulmate if you’ve already found them once.”

“I saw my soulmate!” Rofen shouted as she returned to the department, waking Draien up. She was out of breath, but looked triumphant. “They looked at me, and I saw it in their eyes that it was mutual!”

Asheden didn’t look as happy for Rofen as Draien seemed to be as he congratulated Rofen. Asheden cleared their throat. “Did you not notice we’re in a moving train?” they asked Rofen. “Did you somehow manage to make plans to reconnect with your soulmate? Ask Vicos what it feels like to lose the connection you now have.”

Even Asheden didn’t seem to make Rofen feel down by trying to talk about reality to her. “We actually managed to make plans to meet,” she beamed. “That station, in seven days, at noon.”

That said, the next seven days went by with Vicos, Asheden, and Draien aiding Rofen in making plans on how to get from where their train was heading back to the station where she had seen her soulmate. Just like Niroe before her, Rofen couldn’t stop talking about colors to the others, even when she knew they couldn’t see them. Day by day the colors grew duller like they had with Vicos before, but Rofen didn’t let that bring her down. She was on a roll and was going to enjoy her travel back, meet her soulmate, and plan her future with them.

Rofen didn’t want to go back to the station right away, but exactly twelve hours before she was supposed to meet her soulmate at the station, they were back.

They had found a place to sleep, and Asheden had told Rofen many times that she should sleep, but when Vicos had switched shifts with Draien to let him sleep, Rofen sat up on her bed. “I can’t fall asleep,” she told Vicos.

Vicos shifted on the short bench he was sitting on to make room for Rofen. She got up from the bed and sat down next to Vicos. They sat next to each other in silence for a while.

“How did you feel like when you had seen your soulmate?” Rofen asked Vicos quietly. “I mean, did you look for them? Did you feel like you’re running out of time each moment you’re not with that person?”

Vicos put a hand on Rofen’s back. “As you know, I was seven at the time,” he reminded her. “But I think so, yeah. Even though I don’t really remember the situation that well. Later I blamed myself a lot. You know, I saw my soulmate but I didn’t think of running after them, to meet them, get to know them. I know I was a child, but knowing that I had the chance to do something about it, and then I didn’t do anything… It bugs me.”

Rofen nodded. “I keep thinking that what if I was mistaken, you know?” she confessed. “What if they wrote  _ one _ day instead of seven? What if it meant a different station, a different country even?”

“So, you’re scared that you made a common mistake,” Vicos said, “because that would mean you missed your soulmate like I did, and it might take forever until you meet them again.”

“Exactly,” Rofen nodded, pressing herself against Vicos, who draped his arm on her shoulders. “I could end up like you.”

Vicos scoffed. “I know you meant that as a joke, but that hurt.”

“Sorry.”

“No, I know my luck in finding my soulmate hasn’t been exactly good,” Vicos sighed. “I just hope it will happen sooner rather than later.”

They changed the subject after that and didn’t go back to talking about soulmates at any point. There was too much for the two of them to talk about when the topic was mending clothes and then music. At one point their discussion grew so loud they almost woke up Asheden, and had to move outside the room to talk, because Asheden would not be pleased if they were woken up before it was their turn to be awake.

When it was Asheden’s turn, both Vicos and Rofen were ready for bed. Asheden didn’t start to question why Rofen had stayed up so long, and only wished the two of them good night, taking their place in the brightly lit hall outside the room.

In the morning when Vicos woke up, Rofen was already up and about, appearing not a bit tired even though she had gotten a lot less sleep than Vicos. However, he understood why the girl was so nervous. There were only four hours left until noon.

At noon Vicos, Asheden, and Draien were sitting in the vast hall, a couple of meters away from Rofen, who was standing under the big screens with the train arrival and departure times. She was glancing at them, as if she was afraid they would leave her any minute – which was hardly what they were planning on doing, quite the opposite. They’d stick with Rofen until she had made solid plans with her soulmate, something that was convincing enough that they were sure she wouldn’t be left alone again like her family had done.

“What if they won’t come at all?” Rofen said to her friends at five past noon. “It’s already past the time we were supposed to meet…”

Asheden shook their head at Rofen. “You’re not allowed to say that before the sun goes down,” they said. “You have to have more patience than that.”

Rofen sighed audibly and turned to let her gaze wonder among the crowd, searching for her soulmate again. It didn’t take long for her to spot them. Vicos knew the exact moment Rofen saw her soulmate from the change in her expression – her face immediately lit up with a huge smile.

Her soulmate, a girl with light hair ran to Rofen and looked like she was going to hug her, but instead she stopped withing an arm’s reach. Her chest was heaving from running so fast, but the expression on her face matched Rofen’s.

“I found you,” the light-haired girl panted. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t show up.”

Rofen’s eyes welled up, probably from relief. “Me too,” she confessed. “But I’m glad you did. And that I did.”

Rofen and the girl – Frela – introduced themselves to each other. “Oh, I actually brought my friends with me,” Frela said. “Is that– is it okay– do you want to introduce yourself to them?”

“Definitely,” Rofen said, “I actually brought my friends too.”

Vicos missed the next part of Rofen and Frela’s conversation, because Draien grabbed his arm. “Vicos,” he said quietly. “I just saw–”

“What is it?” Vicos asked, when Draien stopped talking. “Where are you looking at?”

Draien gasped softly. “I thought I just saw my soulmate, but now I saw  _ another _ . Vicos, I have two soulmates.”

That made Asheden lift their head. “Wait, what?” they asked, grabbing Draien’s shoulder. “Who? Where?”

Draien was trying to hide behind Vicos’s back. “Those two that are talking with Rofen and her soulmate right now,” he said in a small voice.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> almost everyone has found their soulmate already...

It took some time to get all the soulmate things with Rofen and Draien figured out. Everyone, including Draien’s soulmates, twins Luna and Reldan, were sceptical of the claim that he had two soulmates. However, it was soon established that Draien was the soulmate of both of them. There had to be some serious sharing of orientations and preferences regarding relationships before all three could agree with the whole thing.

The fact that Luna was Draien’s platonic soulmate was evident really soon. What kind of soulmates he and Reldan were, though, was something to be defined in the future.

While Draien was dealing with his soulmates, Rofen and Frela started getting closer to each other. After the first awkward couple of weeks, they started to be constantly awfully affectionate, sometimes being so adorable that Vicos had to look away.

Even though Vicos and Asheden were helping Rofen and Draien arrange things with their soulmates a lot, they also felt a bit disconnected from the two of them now. Rofen, Draien and Niroe would send pictures of their soulmates to their group chat, and while Vicos did think it was a good thing, he couldn’t help having negative feelings.

However, Vicos was glad he wasn’t alone with his feelings. He and Asheden spent several nights talking about how it felt to be the only ones in their group not to have found their soulmate. Some nights they even went to one-hour hotels – places where people who hadn’t found their soulmate went to seek physical intimacy. Vicos had visited those kinds of places before, always half hoping he would find his soulmate there.

But he didn’t. And neither did Asheden. Both of them did get good sex, which was what they had gone there for, so everything was good.

In a month they had all ended up in Frela’s home. With the assistance of Frela’s mother Draien and his soulmates all contacted their families to explain the situation and find out how to live with it. Rofen had no one to contact, but she was immediately welcomed into Frela’s family.

The last night with all four of them in the same place they video called Niroe to exchange news. “I’m so happy for you little ones!” Niroe said right away when she heard about Rofen and Draien finding their soulmates. “And Asheden, I’m sorry that you’re still looking for your soulmate.”

Asheden shrugged. “It’s like second nature to me by now,” they said. “If I wasn’t looking for my soulmate, I wouldn’t know what to do. I’m fine with the situation. Besides, I still have Vicos with me.”

Vicos and Asheden were going to continue their travels the next morning, so Frela’s family threw them a farewell party. Draien, Luna, and Reldan would stay there a few more days, but Vicos and Asheden had decided they wouldn’t sit idle longer than they had to. They could still both see ultraviolet color on each other, so it was just a matter of time before each of them would find their soulmate.

Months on the road passed by. The year changed, and soon it was spring on the northern hemisphere again. Vicos and Asheden traveled thousands upon thousands of hours, spent time in waiting areas just watching people pass by, visited small towns and metropolises, different countries and continents – even Antarctica once. And still neither of them found their soulmate.

 

It was a beautiful day in late June and Vicos was sitting on a cozy lodging house sundeck in a small town in the Netherlands having his morning tea. “This brings back memories,” said Asheden, sitting down in a chair next to Vicos. “I was here five years ago, looking at that same view. Feels almost like yesterday.”

Something in what Asheden said caught Vicos’s attention more than usual. “Five years ago?” he wondered. “Five years ago on this day I was probably about to leave home for the first time.”

Asheden made a surprised sound. “Really?” they asked. “And you haven't been home since?”

“Well, yes,” Vicos said. “I haven’t had time, with all the soulmate searching going on... dude, what the fuck are you doing?”

Asheden had stood up and was now trying to lift Vicos on his feet. “We have to go now,” they said. “Five years on the road without going to see your family is the longest period of time I will allow that.”

“I’m not even sure I know where they live now!” Vicos protested, but Asheden would have none of it. “Then find the fuck out,” they said, shoving Vicos towards the door. “We’re going to see your family, period. You’re not allowed to have an opinion on this because I  _ know _ your family is adorable and super kind, unlike the graves of my parents.”

Vicos grumbled, but reluctantly did what Asheden told him to. He got in touch with his family and told them he might come for a visit sometime that year. The conversations they had were short, probably written in a hurry, but he had now confirmed that he and Asheden could go visit them.

It took them a month to find their way to Vicos’s home country. Once they were there it was pretty easy to navigate their way to where Vicos’s family lived. It was a clear evening sunset after a day of rain when Vicos and Asheden walked towards the house.

“Look at my hand, it’s shaking,” Vicos said, holding out his hand for Asheden to see, stopping only a couple hundred metres from the house. “What am I supposed to say when I see them? What if we have nothing to say to each other?”

Asheden put a hand on Vicos’s shoulder. “Dude, you’ve traveled around the world,” they said. “If there really comes a moment you can’t think of anything to say I can tell funny stories about you. I’m sure your family will appreciate those. Like that time when you wanted to snort salt up your nose. A classic Bored Vicos move.”

Vicos sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t be afraid of meeting my family even though I haven’t seen them in five years. But I haven’t found my soulmate yet though, so…”

“I thought we had been over this twenty times already,” Asheden said. “They won’t judge you! Didn’t you tell me nobody in your family found their soulmate as a teenager? You have nothing to worry about.”

“I guess you’re right–”

“You  _ know _ I’m right.”

“I know you’re right,” Vicos admitted. “Let’s get this over with.”

They walked the remaining distance to the house in silence. Vicos’s family was still living in the same house where Vicos had been born in, so even seeing the outside of the house already made him emotional. There were so many memories he had from this place, but despite of the strikin familiarity it also looked a bit off. In the five years Vicos had been away there had been renovations and changes to the garden, so the house didn’t look exactly the same as it had last time he had been there.

From the vehicles on the driveway – a fancy car and a bicycle – Vicos could deduce that some of his siblings and Kúura were currently in the house. He was suddenly nervous again and would have backed away on the doorstep, if Asheden hadn’t rung the doorbell.

“What are you doing?” Vicos whispered. “Now they’ll know we’re here!”

Asheden gave Vicos a flat look. “You can go hide if you want, but I’m going to meet your family. One of your siblings might be my soulmate, and if I go away now I might never find out.”

Vicos groaned, but stayed with Asheden waiting for someone to come open the door. It probably took less than a minute but to Vicos it felt like at least five minutes. He had time to remember the many times he had come home without a key and had had to wait outside until someone with a key would return and let him in. It hadn’t been nice in sub-zero degrees.

Vicos’s attention perked up when he heard someone enter the vestibule. But he definitely wasn’t the person who was the most surprised when the door opened.

“–sure if it’s the neighbours or something,” Kúura said as he opened the door. When he turned to see who was behind the door, he halted – but not to look at Vicos. Kúura was staring at Asheden with the same enchanted expression Vicos had seen so many times on people that had just seen color for the first time.

But this time, unlike the last three hundred times he had seen it happen, it hurt Vicos. “Your eyes are so… blue,” Asheden told Kúura in a soft voice Vicos had never heard them use before. It made him want to turn his back and walk away, wish that he had never came back home, or that he had never left. Seeing his two best friends – the only people he could have spent his life with even though they weren’t his soulmates – look at each other like that… it was so painful to watch that Vicos couldn’t breathe.

“Please, come inside,” Vicos heard Kúura say in a similar soft voice that Asheden had used. Vicos was now so sure Kúura was solely talking to Asheden that he dropped his backpack on the porch, turned his back and ran.

He didn’t stop when he heard Kúura and Asheden shout at him, and trusting his legs to take him to secret paths he had known by heart since he was a child Vicos didn’t think at all. At that moment he let his heart decide what he should do. And running away was just that.

As he was running through the park that was really close to his childhood home Vicos noticed he had started crying. Knowing that nobody had followed him – out of respect, fear, or something else, he didn’t really care – he slowed down to a walk and made his way to the familiar bench he had spent so much time on.

Vicos sat down and buried his face in his hands. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He knew he should have been happy for his friends. He should have been, but he wasn’t, and that made him feel like a terrible friend. So, instead of crying Vicos sat on the bench feeling like he was being strangled from the inside – he didn’t even want to breathe, and the soft music coming from the general direction of the corner where there was always a busker playing only made him feel worse.

It felt like the light in his world was disappearing too, the sky turning black instead of pale gray, and his vision narrowing until he could only close his eyes and press hands on his ears. He had to shut the world out. Everything was too bright, too good, too loud.

Vicos sat on the bench for a long time, eyes closed. He wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings much, but did sense that someone sat down on the bench next to him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! comments and kudos always make my day!


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